Our Founder: Emmanuela Shinta

Our Founder: Emmanuela Shinta

Emmanuela Shinta is a Dayak activist and filmmaker whose work is widely known inSoutheast Asia. She is the founder of Ranu Welum Foundation. With a reputation for leading and empowering young people, she regularly speaks at workshops, graduations, panel discussions, activist forums and even in churches, around the region.She is at the forefront of taking an active and peaceful role in preserving the heritage, humanity, and environment of Kalimantan, amidst the infamous haze that engulfs the region each year. In 2016 she started the YOUTH ACT CAMPAIGN, a youth movement to end the forest fires and haze that have been happening for 20 years in Kalimantan.

In 2015, Shinta appeared in the Channel News Asia Singapore documentary entitled Heart of the Haze. ASIAN Geographic also featured her as an ASIAN Icon for issue 2/2016. Altogether with her team in RWF, Shinta works to use media and journalism as the tool for social transformation. Her foundation uses DANUM Magazine, a bilingual magazine made from recycled paper, and also Ranu Welum Youtube Channel as the platform to voice the stories of culture and humanity, and Dayak native people’s connection to the forest of Kalimantan. Her latest documentary, When Women Fight, tells the stories of crisis fire and haze in 2015 has been screened in various events, including ASEAN People’s Forum in Timor Leste, Freedom Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur and the Ubud Writer and Reader Festival 2016.

Shinta attended a conference at the America Culture Center as moderator and speaker, She shared her experience as a Dayak Leader working on human rights and environmental issues in the Global Landscape Forum in Jakarta, and had interviews with CIFOR and other media companies.